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Book Review
The Windstedt syndrome by Dr Syed Hussein Alatas |
| Barbarians, thieves EVER SINCE the publication of his Malay dictionary and other writings the colonial ideology of Windstedt, of the Malayan Civil Service, has continued to dominate the thinking of Malay intellectuals. Notwithstanding the rout of his faithful disciples in the Malay Society of Great Britain with the election in 1948 of Tengku Abdul Rahman as president and Abdul Razak as his number two the spell of the Windstedt ideology continued to dominate the thinking of Malay graduates from Englandl. In this pioneer work, "The Myth of the Lazy Native", Professor Syed Hussein Alatas shows us how this colonial ideology has so overwhelmed the leaders of UMNO that they have adopted the risible stance of looking down and sneering at their own. . There was a need, Dr Syed Hussein wrote, "to unmask the colonial ideology"; and he has done it well, tracing its baneful path from the time when the Portuguese official who saw the Malays as a "cheerful, roguish and very wanton" lot, "barbarians" (another Portuguese), and "very great thieves"(Italian traveller) to the time of UMNO and Dr Mahathir Mohamed who judged the Malays to be hereditarily inferior to the Chinese. Like the Siberian tiger cub, the White supremacy from its infancy never purred but growled. We learn from this book that Raffles had noted the Malay inclination to act on individual will and to express ferocious passion. He was indolent and "when he has rice nothing will induce him to work", "but he is the most polite of savages". Swettenham notes their "disinclination to work". Clifford found the west coast Malays "sadly dull, limp and civilized" and the East coast Malays uncivilized; the Malay "never works if he can help it." Kelantan Malays enjoy the reputation of thieves among thieves. And to Clifford the Malays were decadent and degenerate, "potential victims to a pathological disorder of the mind", "unprofitable and unsatisfactory members of the community." |
| It is not surprising
that the British masters found these barbarians and thieves incapable
of civilised activity. In Windstedt's opinion "no literature can
come from the Malay, a child of nature. The impulse will come from Java
or Sumatera." Indolent, fun loving And here is more from Windstedt "The Malay has a reputation for great indolence. A moist tropical climate, malaria, a soil that tickled laughs with crops, the sumptuary laws of his chiefs, which made fine houses and fine clothes, dangerous for the peasant - all these have contributed to his choice of a quiet, unambitious life" but the Malay is "diligent when his interest is aroused" Clifford, Swettenham, Maxwell and Windstedt merely served to strengthen the image of the indolent, unpredictable, fun loving, superstitious and imitative natives".To sum up, foreign writers all agree that Malays are fond of idleness, are treacherous and wily. So crippling and pernicious is the influence of colonialism that we discover from this book that the UMNO leaders themselves have described the Malays in terms of intense humiliation and in language worse than the colonial masters. In 1971 UMNO published Revolusi Mental the labour of 14 authors. The chief compiler was Senu bin Abdul Rahman secretary general of UMNO. The booklet used such terms as, "the Malays are not honest with themselves, do not see their own faults, lack courage to fight for the truth". "They are fatalists, the major cause of their backwardness. They do not think rationally, they are not frugal and waste on unnecessary expenditure. They lack originality in thought, lack a realistic attitude, they are not frank". Syed Hussein is scathing. The compilation, he says, "characterize the Malays in negative terms unexcelled in the history of colonialism." It showed that there was no intellectual break with British ideological thinking". Syed Hussein asks: why did a ruling party construct a capitalist ideology involving a more thorough degradation of the Malays than expressed during the colonial period?. And he answers that they were under the spell of the colonial image of the Malays. Running amok Then there was Dr Mahathir in 1970 in the Malay Dilemma exhibiting "the same trend of thinking." Geographic environment produced the Malay. "Running amok was an essential part of the Malay character". He found the Malay "fatalistic." They "lacked the positive type of courage"; " firmness was not a Malay characteristic"; "a courageous Malay is foolhardy, adept at overcoming the enemy by stealth and cunning"; "Malays do not put a high value on time"; "they do not have the wish or capacity for hard work;" "it is not the choice of the Malays that they should be rural and poor. It is the result of the clash of racial traits. ...," and so on. After observing that Mahathir cherished good thoughts about the British, Syed Hussein observes that "there is in his mental world no complete break with the with colonial thinking" Dr Syed Hussein concludes that Dr Mahathir and Revolusi Mental "resemble American Negroes who believe what white racists say about them" |
| Dr Syed Hussein suggests
that the fact that Merdeka was handed over and not fought for as in Indonesia
might have contributed to this continuation of colonial thinking, a
thought which is tempting and worthy of further investigation. It
is certainly a mystery why those at the UMNO meetings tolerate the regular
doses of abuse hurled at them. Would Dr Ling Liong Sik have survived his presidency of the MCA had he upbraided the MCA members in the same manner? - the samples of scolding which Dr Syed Hussein has quoted in his book could equally have been used on the members of the MCA. We are now in the year 2004 and fifty years away from Merdeka. But our establishment writers continue to toe the colonial line, writing of history as seen through British eyes, as if this was still British Malaya. Some even use American eyes as is very obvious from the headlines that stare at you from the TV screen and from the newspapers. Why this sickness continues and why foreign charlatans and quacks continue to be worshipped cries for investigation and analysis. Dr Syed Hussein's great work remains largely forgotten here but it has fortunately been immortalised by Edward Said's "Orientalism". # Lim Kean Chye Book reviewed: The Myth of the Lazy Native by Professor Syed Hussein Alatas Frank Cass, London. 1977 |
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| _____ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index
page A Baba examines himself
Baba words Book review Food guide
From Pulau Tikus
Hang Li Po Letter to the editor Pigs legs
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| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 35 |